Now here’s an interesting thing, picked up from a Google text ad. The beta SkyScanner service is a search engine for budget airline flights in Europe. It’s interesting because it looks to be an independent operation (no major airlines or agents are featured, only the budget direct operators like Ryanair and EasyJet), and because it seems to work in real time. Hmmm!

Question: How do you know when the Wal-Mart juggernaut has entered your neighbourhood? Answer: When you find photo cakes for sale down at the local supermarket. Bring in your best shots and get them iced onto a blank cake. Boggle!

Before I forget completely, there were a couple – alas only a couple – of interesting things going on at the recent ECTS game show in London. One was the neat-o Live Action Ping Pong game from Korean company D-Gate which features wireless sensor paddles. Looked like good fun. Mind you this Excalibur Ping Pong game which you plug into your TV looks like fun too, although it wasn’t at the show! And also on an official outing was the…

Hmm, the Symbol SPT 1800 is a rugged Palm powered, barcode scanning handheld computer which will survive a drop of 4 foot onto concrete. And there’s a wireless version too! Around $1000.00 street price.

UK company Pace Micro Technology has just announced a twin tuner Personal Video Recorder. The Twin Digital TV Recorder (hence the photie, geddit?) sports two tuners, two decoders and a 20 GB hard disk drive in its little silver case. This means that you can record heaps of free to air digital stuff to your heart’s delight, or even record one channel whilst watching another, or record two channels simultaneously. Got the message yet? Priced at £349.00 when it arrives…

Motorola has announced the development of a very tiny (read 8mm) GPS chip which may lead to all sorts of clever and tiny satellite guidance devices, like watches, mobile phones and pencils. OK maybe not pencils – just yet – but you get the drift. The company even mentions toys. Really? [via infosync]

I must admit that I hadn’t realised just how far nanotechnology (the science of atomic scale engineering) has actually come in a few short years. This interesting Business 2.0 article looks at just one example, the use of nano sized fibres to create a whole new range of fabrics including waterproof, stainproof and soft cuddly stuff. The Nano-Tex company certainly looks like it’s on to a winner. More on nano stuff here. Warning: Business 2.0 operate a dog slow site!

Essential Reality’s P5 Glove is yet another attempt to introduce virtual manipulation to the computing and gaming world. Slip glove on, wiggle it about, and presto your actions are translated into on-screen movements. Well that’s the theory, and who am I to disagree? It will be out before Xmas at an anticipated price of around $150.00.

I’ve got to say that this Random FAQ generator just creases me up. Fabulous! Q: I think a third party has been evading my body lotion.A: Whatever you do, don’t set up home with it. You’ve got to snort it first. Press refresh to get new Qs. [via Fark]

Here’s an interesting little piece from AsiaBizTech which suggests that eventually mobile phones and wallets will combine and we’ll all pay for things electronically using our handsets. Er..I’ve got to say that this seems quite logical. Perhaps we’ll all end up with smart badges which will act as wallet, phone, GPS and sandwich maker all in one.

FujiFilm appear to have opened up a new front in the camcorder/digital camera war. The new 3 megapixel FinePix M603 Zoom is a digital camera which incorporates fairly advanced home movie features. F’rinstance it can capture 640×480 movies at 30 frames per second with sound (good enough for full screen TV playback!) onto either Compact Flash or xD cards. Apparently xD cards are eventually scheduled to go up to 8GB in size, which means that you will be able to…

Phil Askey is being a really busy bee at Photokina in Germany and has posted some great first look sample images taken with the new Foveon chip powered Sigma SD9 digital camera. They look great, even to my untrained eye. Update: ..and now some additional even more impressive ones here.

Call it a hunch, but I really get the feeling that these flexible LED screen products are about to come good. Flexible Lithium Polymer batteries, flexible circuit boards and flexible screens make for a powerful 21st century product proposition all right.